The explosion of social networking has led to extensive sharing of information including items such as videos, photos, blogs, links, etc. In order to support the demand on information sharing and data storage, more and more physical storage devices are incorporated into the existing data storage systems. Data stored on each physical storage device may represent significant memories or assets for many users. However, physical storage devices may fail randomly or after a certain amount of usage. Data losses can be costly in terms of wasted time and loss of good will from users.
One solution is to implement a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID). In a RAID system, data is replicated into two or more copies across independent disks, collectively referred to as an array. A RAID controller adds parity data to the original data before storing it across the array. The parity data is used to recover the original data in the event of disk failures.